Friday, February 02, 2007

The Friday "toy"

"Mom! Look what I found!" This is the sort of whimsical pic where the caption-writers could have a field day... all suggestions welcome.

The official caption, however, tells us that Sgt. Diego Sarracino is not about to go shopping in downtown Baghdad with his trolley (cart). He is in fact towing the USMC RQ-2B Pioneer unmanned aerial vehicle to the hangar after it has completed a five-hour mission at Al Taqaddum, Iraq, on 28 Feb 2006.

UAVs are turning out to be the "secret weapon" of the Iraqi war, providing eyes for the ground forces in a way that has never been experienced in any other campaign. Not, of course, that the British forces would know anything about that. Our tactical UAV, the Phoenix, sort of crashed and burned - and never rose again from the flames.

An official DoD pic, photo credit is given to Lance Cpl (then) Brandon L. Roach. I bet he had a hard time as a kid.